Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Here were have an op/ed piece discussing re-versioning historical accounts to suit current social / political stances. It sounds kind of dirty to say it, but if you keep in mind that whatever version you have -- any version at all -- was written to suit a specific social / political stance, it's less dodgy and more like plain old disappointing. Perhaps what I found most interesting about this short article is that the author effectively compares the current educational agendas in Russia and Texas. Someone should probably feel at least a little bit weird about that.

Friday, June 25, 2010

I think I see how we can make the world a better place! Just go read this, and afterward, think about what tactile sensation translates into giving a shit about stuff that matters. Maybe everyone needs to spend some time every day touching unbearably fragile things, ephemeral things, gossamer things. Maybe everyone needs to spend a few seconds savoring something precious. Physically, tangibly precious.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Something just occurred to me: why isn't there a DVD rental-by-mail service that rents all the foreign movies that come out? Someone will clean up doing that.

I know the mail order DVD rental places will rent foreign movies, but only a few of them. There is a massive trade imbalance with movies: almost every American film made plays around the world, but only a few foreign movies ever make it to North America. Here in Canada, it's even worse- we get all of the American films, but most Canadian films never play in Canada, in spite of the fact that we fund them through taxes! It goes without saying that most Canadian films never make it to America and the ones that do are disguised as American films (Juno, A History of Violence, etc.)

A number of countries have thriving film industries that barely export anything. I was thinking about this while reading this Salon article about a French film from 2008 that is now playing in NYC and online. It's a very positive review and it occurs to me that there are a ton of French movies like this made every year. If you live in North America, however, there are only two ways to see them: 1. Watch the small fraction of French films that get released in North America, or 2. Download them from a file-sharing site. And it's the same with Japanese films, German films, Spanish movies, etc. etc. You have to get a multi-region player and find an ethnic importer store.

So, it seems to me that, were there a distributor who rented the movies through the mail in the North American region format, they'd corner an untapped market and make a lot of money. Am I right?

I know this will sound cynical, and I don't necessarily mean it that way. But I do find it interesting that we have already had this oil spill before. (For comparison, here's the current spill.) The quick solution doesn't seem to have many fans outside Russia, and the solution they went with on the Ixtoc I (the first Gulf of Mexio spill in '79) was to drill a relief well... that's not going to be a quick fix. What I'm wondering about is how quickly we will all lose interest in this horror. I actually have the sense that it is already kind of waning. Even shock photos of oily pelicans aren't really getting much more than a weak "awwww, that's a damn shame" from most people at this point. The Persian Gulf "spill" during the Iraq war, was several times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill, and never really subject to any clean up efforts. There's still oil blobbing up all over the place there 20 years later. Yet, mention it in conversation, and you're just as likely to get "oh yeah, that's right, that DID happen!" as anything else.

Do I have a solution? No. Nor am I here railing about how someone should do something. Mostly I'm mourning what appears to be a crapload of apathy. People forget so easily what happens, and I think that really contributes to these things repeating. Because when it comes time to set limits, regulations, safety measures, and so on, no one is truly shaken to the core by the horror of the things we do. We have become jaded and disaffected about our Sodom & Gomorrah scenery.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

How in the world are they going to remove all that oil from the Gulf of Mexico? Paul Stamets suggests mycoremediation: using mushrooms to consume the spill. He's made it work surprisingly well on land- I'm not sure how it would work at sea. But it's worth a shot along with every other idea they can think of, right?